


Let 'Em Wait

by Liu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Cancer, Euthanasia, Gen, M/M, Pain, Pre-Slash, Sickness, the bite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s in the middle of January when Stiles gets diagnosed with leukemia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let 'Em Wait

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a part of famous (though false) last words of Ethan Allen, an American writer, philosopher and patriot, who supposedly got shot and when his doctor told him that angels were waiting for him, Allen replied: "Waiting, are they? Waiting, are they? Well, let 'em wait!"

It’s in the middle of January when Stiles gets diagnosed with leukemia.

At first, he doesn’t pay the symptoms much attention: after all, it’s just been a few months since he’d woken up from a werewolf-induced coma that prevented him from taking his entrance exams, resulting in him being forced to stay in Beacon Hills.

If Stiles is to be honest, it was more of a witch-induced coma and the werewolves did try to warn him: but the stakes were too high and Stiles couldn’t sit back and do nothing. So he ended up unconscious for weeks, and when he woke up, he did not pay attention to some residual fatigue.

After all, one does not simply lie in a hospital bed for nearly three months without getting a bit weaker, right? So he goes to the animal clinic for his job, which he got as a pathetic attempt to stay close to a shadow of Scott lurking in there, and doesn’t think twice about his loss of strength.

When he finally realizes that his health is steadily deteriorating, he risks a visit to the hospital.

The results come back all too soon. It’s the same thing his Mom had, and that’s how Stiles knows he’s not gonna make it. His Dad knows too, even though he keeps a brave face for Stiles’ sake. But Stiles can see him get paler with every day, the circles under Dad’s eyes darkening with every night he spends rubbing Stiles’ back when the effects of the chemo kick in and he throws up until his stomach is strained and his throat sore, and he kind of understands his Mom a little better.

It’s not that the chemo can save him. But he has to pretend that he’s fighting, just as his Dad pretends that everything’s gonna be okay.

Derek shows up, as if he could smell Stiles getting sick from all the way across town. Stiles tells him to piss off, because he has no strength to deal with werewolf business right now. Derek scowls at him, looks like he wants to say something, but in the end, he doesn’t.

The doctors tell Stiles to keep his hopes up, to think positive: but it’s impossible when all his hope had been wasted in that very same hospital eight years ago and buried together with his Mom.

Stiles knows it’s just a matter of time now – the pain is becoming unbearable, and Stiles endured a lot of crap in his life, mostly because of weird werewolf business, but at least then, he knew the pain would eventually stop and that he was enduring it for a reason. Right now, the only way this is gonna end is with his Dad left completely alone, which is not a great prospect, but some nights, it all gets particularly bad and Stiles just wants it to be over.

Sometimes, it gets so bad that he wonders what would’ve been if he’d accepted Peter’s offer back in that parking lot.

That’s when Derek appears again. Stiles forbade any visitors except his Dad – he doesn’t want people to come in and pity him and remember him as a half-dead skeleton of a person with too many tubes in his body, the machines bleeping away the seconds left of this pathetic excuse for a life. He doesn’t even let Dad call Scott back from college – he knows he won’t be able to keep up the pretense of ‘okay’ on the phone for long, but Scott’s been calling less and less and that’s okay.

So of course Derek finds his way to Stiles’ room, and being the creeper he is, he finds the moment when Stiles’ whole body is clenched around the random bursts of pain he can feel all over. The morphine stopped working weeks ago; Stiles is sweaty and pale and on the doorstep of death, and he wants to say something smartass and light, but he lacks the strength and Derek can smell the truth all over the room, anyway, no need to keep up appearances.

In some strange way, it’s liberating, not having to smile for someone’s sake. Stiles loves his Dad, but lately every visit’s just an exhausting, excruciating attempt to hold on to the last remnants of hope for each other’s sake. Stiles wonders if it’s really helping anybody, this twisted sense of duty they have towards each other’s feelings.

“What do you want?” Stiles asks, his voice hoarse and quiet, and he briefly, morbidly wonders whether he should say something profound, so his last words won’t be ‘Derek, get out’ or something.

Derek stalks closer, looms over the bed, then sits down on the edge of the mattress. It dips under his weight, and Stiles isn’t sure if the movement hurts him, or if it just coincides with a shot of agony through his body.

“You’re getting worse,” Derek says, and there’s no real surprise in his tone.

“No shit,” Stiles coughs, and there’s no real irony. Stiles thinks it’s truly astounding how many things require strength he doesn’t have anymore.

“Your Dad’s getting worse, too.”

Stiles knows. He can see his Dad getting paler and thinner every time he comes to visit: he can see his Dad looking at him and seeing his Mom. Stiles always resembled her, and now, with his head bare, looking like death warmed over (temporarily), he’s sure he resembles her even more.

He really wishes he was strong enough to say something sarcastic and shoo Derek out of this room. Like this, he’s left just staring at Derek, wondering why the werewolf came to see him in the middle of the night, in the middle of the worst pain. Maybe Derek can smell that Stiles’ end is near – Stiles is a little bit disgusted with how relieved he feels at the thought of that.

“I want to offer you the bite,” Derek says in the end, and if Stiles still had eyebrows, they would’ve shot up.

“What…?”

“The bite. I want to bite you,” Derek repeats, and Stiles wants to say no. Stiles _remembers_ he should say no – but suddenly he sees no point. The pain is getting worse every time he thinks it _can’t_ get any worse, his Dad is starting to look as much like a zombie as Stiles does, and either way, this can’t end well. He’s wasting away in a hospital bed, alternating between bored out of his mind and in raw agony, so being bitten can certainly only improve things.

“I’ll die,” Stiles speaks slowly, searching Derek’s face for any clues. But the Alpha’s features remain hard, motionless, and his eyes keep their focus on Stiles’ face when he nods.

“Yes. You’re dying anyway.”

It occurs to Stiles that this is why Derek waited for this moment, when Stiles is so exhausted by the pain that he wouldn’t say ‘no’ even if he could think straight. It smells of manipulation, but Stiles doesn’t really care: whether he dies or lives, the pain stops tonight, and that’s all he can really wish for. Keeping himself half-alive for a few more days or weeks or months isn’t gonna help anyone.

“Okay,” he says, and he almost doesn’t feel it when Derek pulls up his hospital gown and sinks his teeth into Stiles’ side – so maybe the morphine _is_ working, but the cancer is working a lot more.

He smiles when Derek straightens his back and puts his fangs away, a thin trail of blood running down his chin. It’s the first genuine smile he’s had since forever, the first one that’s for his sake only, not to make someone else feel better. It gives him some sort of a twisted, weird closure, that Derek came to say goodbye. Dad’s working tonight, and maybe that’s better: they’ve been saying their goodbyes through worried looks and fake smiles for weeks.

“Thanks,” he says before his eyes fall closed. He feels a ghost of a touch on his hand, but when he finds the strength to look, Derek’s gone, the outline of his teeth soaking into the hospital gown. Stiles briefly wonders whether the nurses will think the shape strange in the morning; it’s not like he hasn’t been bleeding randomly for quite some time.

His last thought before the darkness claims him is the wish that he wouldn’t wake up.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had a dream along the lines of this and couldn't let it go unwritten. There is a huge possibility there will be more chapters/maybe a series, so the ending is really ambiguous - read in any way you like.


End file.
